The Fast and Furious 6 didn't hit the charts at the country's top movie a couple weeks back because of amazing acting, snappy dialogue or an innovative plot. It's because of the cars, and the car chases.

But how did the camera crew pull it off? The heart-pounding chases through central London, rural Spain and on an airport runway take only a few minutes, but are so intricate that they look like they took days to film.

Credit camera car driver Allan Padelford, who explains the process on a website called The Credits. He's the only who drives alongside the cars with the stars Vin Diesel or Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson behind the wheel to catch all the action. To do it, it takes special camera cars that are often as hot as the stars' cars.

For instance, there is a Cadillac Escalade with an arm that extends 26 feet that can be used for scenes at freeway speeds. It carries a crew of five. As the crane car chronicles the overall scene, a Porsche Cayenne Turbo weaves in simultaneous for the close-ups.

If a character is hanging on the side of car, it's the Porsche that gets the facial shots.

But there is one camera car at work. This a Subaru especially designed for shots inches off the ground. As a lightweight performance car, Padelford considers it the most fun to drive.

Sure, the work is dangerous. During the filming of the latest Fast and Furious installment, pieces of a bridge that was destroyed rained down on the Suburu. It made for great footage, but damanged a camera and broke the car's windshield.

Padelford has come a long way since his first movie in which he hooked up a camera to a Chevrolet El Camino. That movie? The NASCAR film Days of Thunder starring Tom Cruise.